Amino acids and reef aquarium: Cysteine
Cysteine seems to be less interesting amino acid as it is found in only 11 abstracts out of 4300 scientific papers I have in my collection. There are some papers that discuss Cysteine as a part of special proteins in marine invertebrates but these are much too advanced (for me) or theoretical to apply to aquariums. Here are the few roles I could find:
- Cysteine induced food ingestion in sea anemone (Nagai and Nagai 1973)
- Cysteine forms 1:1 chelates with zinc and reduces its toxicity (Stauber and Florence 1990)
- Cysteine is effectively utilized by bacteria, one of the more suitable carbon sources (Donderski et al. 1998)
- Cysteine inhibits feeding rates of the marine planktonic protist (ciliate) Favella sp. (Strom et al. 2007)
References:
Donderski et al. Utilization of Low Molecular Weight Organic Compounds by Marine Neustonic and Planktonic Bacteria. Polish Journal of Environmental Studies (1998)
Nagai and Nagai. Feeding factors for the sea anemone Anthopleura midorii. Marine Biology (1973)
Stauber and Florence. Mechanism of Toxicity of Zinc to the Marine Diatom Nitzschia closterium. Marine Biology (1990) vol. 105 (3)
Strom et al. Responses of marine planktonic protists to amino acids: feeding inhibition and swimming behavior in the ciliate Favella sp. Aquatic Microbial Ecology (2007)